PNG176 - ethnographic attestation
Nasioi
Papua New Guinea - Bougainville - Oceania - Sahul
Function not recorded
Source term: bullroarer / sacred flute / slit-gong flags
Swung fast on its cord, the flat blade throbs like a voice rising out of the forest — but what the Nasioi of the Kieta hills, in southeast Bougainville, made that voice say was never written down. Around 1909 the German physician Ernst Frizzi sketched one of their bullroarers, the earliest record of Nasioi life; decades later it was folded into a wider survey of New Guinea's secret, women-barred sound-makers. Yet the people's own ethnographer found no boys' initiation here, and the rite behind the roar stayed unrecorded.
- Object
- bullroarer occurrence; bullroarer use; slit-gong occurrence
- Function
- Gourlay Table 1 row 176 records Nasioi bullroarer occurrence/use and slit-gong occurrence; the Frizzi page and figure remain unrecovered.
- Map confidence
- medium - alias_area
- Source location
- Table 1, row 176